Days and Daze….

Day 22 – This is not Sparta….

Warning this will sound a bit like a grumpy old man post, all what’s wrong with today’s youth and video games are the root evil…

It has aspects of that, but it is more about the failure of many parents (myself included) to give children the opportunity to be a bit more independent… It is easy to say “it is not the same world as when we were kids”… We blame technology and kid snatching boggey men… The media has us scared to let our kids use a hammer, let alone walk to the shops by themselves… The problem is the figures don’t support the level of angst…

So if the world isn’t anymore dangerous than it was for us, why is it that my children can’t hammer a nail into a block of wood, shoot tin cans off a fence or be bored for an hour… It’s my fault… My fault for buying into media hype and paranoia…

I want my kids to confident, interesting people… Part of that is not being useless… The idea of raising useless humans is horrible… I see future useless humans all the time, and it scares me… It used to be a joke or an exaggeration to say someone couldn’t change a lightbulb, there are now adults out there that can’t, or can’t with confidence… People pay other people to assemble their ikea flat-packs… Furniture is thrown out because someone can’t tighten a screw… I really don’t want to raise a person that sits in a dark room till their dad comes over to change a lightbulb, and I don’t want to be in my 60s up a ladder!!!…

So my children can expect a few staple guns and screwdrivers in there immediate future… Note to self restock first aid cabinet with band-aids… There is a another thing, my children rarely injure themselves… I am not talking about serious injuries, but the occasional scrape from a slip with a screwdriver would be ok… A bit more of the “are you bleeding or on fire?” Attitude is needed I think, if I went to my either of my grandparents with the “injuries” my children come to me with, I would have laughed at (in a kind way)… Maybe because they managed to live through a war and killed all their own vegetables, they just assumed people (including me) are not useless and let me chop wood and shoot tins with a slug gun from the porch… I am sure I did hurt myself, but to tell the truth I don’t really remember if I did… Well I do remember once when I was about twelve I knelt on a thumbtack and it stuck in my kneecap, it hurt like hell, but I remember that no one was home, so I stuck a butter knife under the thumbtack and pried it off the bone… I can’t see my kids doing home surgery on themselves in the same situation?… but mainly I just remember the fun and independence…

I think my children need some of that fun and independence, and the confidence that comes with knowing you can sharpen a knife and bang a nail into a couple of blocks of wood…